


Roots Deep

by decidueye



Series: zodiac (sit outside my door) [1]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Bunny Bokuto, Dragon Akaashi, Japanese Mythology & Folklore, Magical Realism, Other, Zodiac AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-20
Updated: 2018-03-20
Packaged: 2019-04-05 03:02:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,533
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14034753
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/decidueye/pseuds/decidueye
Summary: Akaashi Keiji has been alone on their mountain for what feels like forever, and they have never wanted anything else. A wandering rabbit changes everything.





	Roots Deep

**Author's Note:**

  * For [painpackerrisingsun](https://archiveofourown.org/users/painpackerrisingsun/gifts).



> i've been retweeting all of the zodiac bokuaka art and teasing painpacker for too long not to do this. it was time. the first in a series! i have a lot of ideas if all goes well.
> 
> thanks to robin and maëlle for the beta and encouragement.

Keiji has grown used to the silence; so used to it that it’s no longer silence at all. In the centuries that have passed since humans stopped climbing their mountain to visit, the surroundings have grown more vibrant and cacophonous in their wake - if anything, Keiji might wish for a moment of peace. The river thunders during rainy season and bubbles in the summer; birds fly overhead with teasing songs about places Keiji has never seen; the wind rattles through trees and sends the wildlife nesting it into disarray. Keiji hadn’t noticed these sounds when they had been at the height of their power and riverbank was filled with chattering visitors. Now they maintain their existence through superstitions and dragon festivals in villages they have never seen, and Keiji has enough time to listen to insects grinding their mandibles against the grass. It’s as deafening as it is tedious, and it takes a hundred years for Keiji to persuade themself they like it.

After then, though, the waters are smooth. Loneliness is a comfortable shroud, and decades blur into centuries thanks to careful routine. Keiji’s home shrinks to a quarter of its size and they keep it scrupulously maintained, built to protect themselves and their pearl. In the mornings, they cleanse the river so that the villages who collect their water from it won’t go hungry, and then they spend their afternoon on gardening and meditation. The flowers surrounding their home bloom beautifully, and they have fresh fruit for most of the year in spite of the rocky surroundings. Keiji doesn’t hunt much anymore, and their offerings have all but vanished, but they don’t miss the meat from their diet, living on rice and home grown vegetables with a sense of self-satisfaction.

It’s peaceful, and it’s quiet, and Keiji doesn’t want anything to change. And yet...

“...Bored.”

Keiji finds a word for what they’re feeling as the sun begins to set over the snow capped mountains, and when they speak it, it feels as though a quake has passed through the earth. They don’t talk much anymore - not to themselves nor the animals who pass through - and their voice is hoarse and strange to them. It’s loud, and the sigh that escapes their mouth after they’ve spoken is even more so. They watch the sky apprehensively; it can’t be good that they see their own voice as a harbinger of doom. Keiji clutches their tea cup more tightly, and the steam from it curls around the roof of the engawa, rising into the clouds.

The snap of a branch startles them from their reverie. It’s not unusual for the occasional wild animal to stray close to Keiji’s ancient shrine, but the sound was loud enough to be heard from the front of their house, meaning it must have come from something large. heir vegetable garden still needs protection in the harsher months of winter in spite of Keiji’s magic, so they rise to their feet, ready to chase off any four-legged mischief-makers.

Picking up a wooden staff, Keiji circles their home until they arrive at the foot of their garden, stopping in their tracks before they step onto the soil. A man - or rather, a spirit like them, as long, furry ears sprout from his head - is pulling up their turnips, blunt fingers sinking into the dirt with so much gusto that he doesn’t notice Keiji’s presence until they clear their throat. When he looks up, his eyes go wide, ears standing to attention as he falls flat on his backside. “Ah!”

Keiji lowers the staff; clearly they’re not going to need it.

“I’m sorry!” the intruder squeaks at the same time as Keiji goes to greet him. “I’m just hungry and it’s cold and - oh, woah, are you a  _ dragon? _ ”

He’s still on the ground, but his expression has changed from  fear to awe, and he studies Keiji’s form without bothering to hide it. Keiji crosses their arms over their chest, tail flicking.

“Just a common stag,” they reply drily, and the intruder laughs, high-pitched and brash. “What about you, rabbit? There haven’t been other spirits in these mountains for centuries.”

“I’m not from here.” Dusting himself off, the turnips still in his hands, the intruder gets to his feet, stepping over Keiji’s carefully maintained soil with abandon. They wince as he offers them a deep bow, head shooting back up so fast Keiji fears it might fly off. “Bokuto Koutarou. I’m from a forest about....two leagues south of here. I looked after the babies. At least I think that’s where it is...I’ve been travelling for a year now, and I’ve gone in circles so many times I think I’ve broken my internal compass.”

“That sounds difficult,” Keiji tells him. This is the most they’ve spoken to another soul in centuries. Their throat feels hoarse. Bokuto nods emphatically, clutching the turnips more tightly in his hand. He looks between them and their home. “I’m Akaashi Keiji. Why did you leave your home?”

Keiji had only considered it once, when the humans first stopped visiting. They couldn’t imagine being anywhere else, though - and after all, the river still had to be cleansed. 

Bokuto’s foot thumps against the ground, and suddenly he won’t meet their gaze.

“I fell asleep,” he says eventually. “It was winter, and I always sleep more, so when I woke up and felt as if a long time had passed, I wasn’t worried. But everything had changed. My shrine was gone. There were no more people.” 

Keiji has no comfort to offer, so they stay silent.

“I figured I’d see if there was anyone else still out there, or...find another village or something. So much is different now! I’ve seen a lot. But no more spirits - not until now, anyway. I’ve never seen a dragon.”

“Hm,” Keiji says, ignoring the excited wiggle of Bokuto’s tail. They turn on their heel. “You can keep the turnips. I’m going to have to redig the garden anyway.”

Bokuto follows them as they walk back around the house, and for the first time Keiji notices that his movements are sluggish. He’s bouncing the way Keiji might expect a rabbit to, but there’s no grace to it, and his chest heaves with the effort to keep up with them.

“Wait, wait-!” Bokuto says. “This is your place, right? You’re here alone…? With this garden and all this space and  _ warmth _ and -”

“ _ What do you want _ ” Keiji snaps, losing their patience, and Bokuto jumps back a little when they spin to face him. After a moment he seems to steel himself, grasping at the sleeve of Keiji’s hakama.

“Let me stay the winter,” he says, golden eyes burning with determination as though he has just issued Keiji a challenge. Keiji’s hackles rise, and it’s with distaste that they realise they’re taking the bait. “You’ve got plenty of room, and it’s so tiring for me you’ll barely notice I’m here. I don’t want to fall asleep for another millenium.”

“That’s not my problem,” Keiji begins, but Bokuto’s hold only tightens on their sleeve; somehow he knows that they’re going to surrender.

“We don’t know how few of us are left - don’t you think we should stick together?” he asks. When Keiji doesn’t reply, he continues. “Think of it as hiring an assistant. I’ll clean for you - cook, whatever.”

“Rabbit stew?” Bokuto looks horrified, and Keiji laughs. It takes them by surprise; they can’t remember the last time something amused them. 

“You bastard,” Bokuto says when he realises they were teasing, and when Keiji goes back into their house, they make no move to challenge him again when he follows.

“What’s for dinner? Don’t say rabbit again,” Bokuto asks as he steps up out of the genkan, peering around their main room with interest. He leaves no corner uninvestigated, and Keiji is starkly aware of the emptiness of their house. Everything they don’t need has long since been cleared out, and that leaves very little for Bokuto to see. It’s more telling than Keiji cares to admit.

“Those turnips,” Keiji responds. “Seeing as you harvested them so generously for us.”

Bokuto laughs, waving the turnips around in his hand. Dirt spreads across the tatami; Keiji wrinkles their nose in distaste.

“You said you can cook?”

“About that…” Bokuto says, scratching his neck when Keiji raises an eyebrow. “I can! I promise...I just haven’t in a while. It’s going to take me some practice to work those muscles again, so...can you help? Just this once.”

Just this once.

Just the winter.

Keiji feels like they’re going to be hearing that a lot, and winter looks much longer than it had that morning.

**

It doesn’t take long for Bokuto to make a home within Keiji’s. They want to call it nesting, but the dim memory that rabbits are supposed to burrow holds them back. Then again, that wouldn’t be the least conventional thing about him.

Bokuto is surprisingly quiet even in his loquaciousness, which Keiji puts down to the winter. He chatters on whilst Keiji gathers a reserve of blankets and cushions for him, and by the time they have finished he is exhausted. He puts the blankets together in a pile around himself, tucks himself into the kotatsu and falls asleep until Keiji wakes him for dinner. Keiji had thought the length and hardship of his travels had been exaggerated for their entertainment and pity. Now that they have a chance to observe the tired rings under his eyes and the matted fur on his ears, they aren’t so sure.

Keiji doesn’t have an extra futon, but Bokuto doesn’t mind, wriggling under the kotatsu each night and sleeping long into the afternoons. Occasionally, he tries to slide into Keiji’s bed, but they only relent once, when the snow outside falls so heavily that even they can feel the chill. Bokuto clings to them like a furry heater, heart beating twice the speed of their own, and Keiji is too unsettled by a feeling they can’t identify to invite him into their bed again.

The feeling persists, though. Keiji catches Bokuto rifling through their books, staring at the pages in confusion, and their heart leaps into their mouth when he asks them to read to him. He knows kana, but his knowledge of kanji was scant to begin with and has blurred in his time asleep, so Keiji sits with him going painstakingly through the shortest of their books, making him trace the characters onto washi. His brush strokes are clumsy, bristles splaying over the material with a crackle that makes them cringe, but Keiji doesn’t give up.

“Why do I have to do this?” Bokuto whines when he gets tired, interlocking his fingers and stretching out his arms. His foot thumps against the floor and Keiji regards him, unimpressed. “I prefer to listen to you read anyway.”

“It’s a good skill to have,” Keiji responds, and that’s the only explanation they offer, because it seems too much to say that they enjoy the soft grinding of his teeth when he concentrates, and that guiding his hand across the paper is the only way for them to get physical contact from him without feeling overwhelmed.

When the dark of December begins to fade, Bokuto follows Keiji down to the river each morning, granting his own blessing as they cleanse the water. He asks about the villages below, and Keiji tells him what they can remember. It’s more than they had thought, and it hurts to tell the stories, not just because they are so unused to speaking that their throat begins to scratch after thirty minutes. Bokuto tells them not to push themself when he presses tea into their hands that afternoon; he says they don’t have to talk to him if they don’t want to. Keiji is surprised to find that they do.

Bokuto might not be much of a disturbance, but his presence fills Keiji’s home with light. In spite of the harsh winter their grounds flourish, and Keiji finds themself revitalised in ways they’d never expected. They don’t know their bones had been aching until the pain fades under Bokuto’s touch; they don’t realise how long they had been lonely until Bokuto smiles at the first sign of spring and their gut twists at the thought of him leaving.

Something has to be done about it. Keiji catches Bokuto in the garden, hard at work repairing his previous destruction, and the sight of him, dirt laden and sweating despite the cold air, pushes them beyond their vulnerability.

They’re a dragon, for gods’ sake. A conversation with a rabbit shouldn’t be enough to strike fear into their heart.

“Bokuto-san,” Keiji says, and Bokuto looks up at them with the same eyes that had regarded them when they first met, only this time there is a smile on his face. “Come here.”

“So weird, you calling me Bokuto-san when I’m the one who works for you,” he says as he wipes dirt over his face. Bokuto had quickly abandoned formal address, drawling their name without titles in all manner of ways to get their attention. “What’s going on?”

“It’s nearly spring.” Keiji doesn’t waste time with small talk. They’ve forgotten how to, if they ever did in the first place. Bokuto’s ears droop and he looks at the sky, shielding his eyes from the sun.

“It is, huh? I hadn’t noticed,” he lies. “Time is still weird for me, you know, after all the sleeping.”

Keiji nods, letting it slide. “Mm. What are you going to do?”

There is a long pause, and even though silence only retakes the valley for the minute it takes Bokuto to speak, Keiji finds its return unbearable. They hold Bokuto’s gaze even as their ears ring.

“I don’t know,” he says after a while. His nose twitches. “Travel more, I suppose.”

He sounds no more excited by the notion than Keiji is, and so they reach out to him, fingers cupping his elbow. He’s still covered in sweat; he should go inside before he catches a cold. “What if you didn’t have to?” 

Even if Bokuto were still a complete stranger, Keiji would have been able to read his reaction. His nose wriggles as his ears shoot up towards the sky, and the light in his eyes reads pure astonishment. Keiji can’t see from where they’re standing in front of him, but they’re fairly certain his tail is moving a mile a minute as well.

“...do I have to?” he asks. It wouldn’t be beyond Keiji for this to be a cruel prank, but Bokuto doesn’t realise that they couldn’t bring themself to hurt him anymore. They smile, teeth showing, and Bokuto gasps.

“You don’t,” Keiji says. “I think I’ve been alone for long enough.”

Spring is still hurtling towards them, but now Keiji sees its approach with hope instead of fear. It blossoms in their chest, fresh air clearing their dusty lungs, and when they exhale it’s with a lightness that makes them think they might float into the sky. Bokuto laughs, delighted, and Keiji leads him back into the house that they can both call home.

**Author's Note:**

> find me on [twitter](http://twitter.com/deciduice) and [tumblr](http://deciduice.tumblr.com). talk to me about zodiac bokuaka and i'll be in the palm of your hand.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Neither Can Floods Drown It](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14066364) by [bicklecostigan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bicklecostigan/pseuds/bicklecostigan)




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